


Warriors

by CinnamonLily



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Alien Stiles Stilinski, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, First Meetings, Fluff, Gen, Gender Identity, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Professor Peter Hale, Scars, Sort of at least, Tattoos, Worldbuilding, anthropologist Peter, because why not?, blue!Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 07:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinnamonLily/pseuds/CinnamonLily
Summary: Peter is ten years old when humans discover Azure, a planet not unlike Earth. From there on, he wants to learn everything about their new neighbors and the planet itself. It takes him over twenty years to get to Azure, but when he does, it's so worth it. His anthropologist heart is happy, and a new acquaintance in the form of an Azurian called Stiles might just make the rest of him happy, too.





	Warriors

Peter was ten years old when the planet was discovered. It was a scientific breakthrough, and in some miraculous way, the humans didn’t fuck things up. Everything stayed peaceful, and with the technologies both Earth and Azure—named for the color the planet seemed to be from space—the people of both planets understood each other pretty much perfectly within one year of initial contact.

Azure was about the same size as Earth, with remote, unexplored corners Earth didn’t have anymore. Peter learned all there was to be learned about the planet at school, and went into anthropology in college, after becoming fixated in the cultural differences between the Azurians and humans.

He was thirty-three years old, when he finally was in a place in his life he needed to be to visit the planet that had fascinated him for over two decades.

 

* * *

 

He landed on Azure on a dark evening after space travel that took much longer than he liked to think about. Space creeped him out, and being on solid ground again, even if it wasn’t his home planet, seemed… comforting.

The locals and the diplomats living on Azure welcomed him and took him to the embassy in the capital city of the region where their space center was located. Everyone seemed keen on having the “esteemed Professor Hale” on Azure, and frankly Peter had had enough of his title already on Earth.

They knew of his work and his research, though. And that meant he could do what he’d come to Azure for; to escape.

 

* * *

 

Using his research as an excuse, he left the city and traveled around Azure for more than two years. He did take notes, gathered research, but mostly he just lost himself in the new planet that was almost like Earth, but like…. Well, his niece Cora had once learned about a prank where you moved someone’s furniture two inches. Every piece of furniture, to the same direction, just two inches. And suddenly the apartment owner stubbed their toes on things, or dropped the remote to the floor when the coffee table wasn’t quite where it had been before and so on. That was how Azure felt to Peter, like everything was just a little bit off alignment.

While Azurians had technology, it was different from Earth tech. The origin of the need for it was often different, and so they thought of it in a different way. It shocked Peter when he saw the first people with artificial limbs that were made of some sort of metal, or when he saw the scans of a man who’d had most of his organs replaced with laboratory grown ones after he got into an accident.

The medical miracles that were common day things for Azurians blew Peter’s mind. But more than that, he was interested in the social aspects of these beautiful people.

Because yes, Azurians were beautiful. Something about them made them unbelievably attractive to him. They weren’t conventionally beautiful in an Earth way, not with their slightly blue-tinted almost translucent skin and large eyes in various colors. Their ears were what an early anthropologist had called “elvish” and they had different kinds of hair styles, depending on personal preference, status, or region.

 

* * *

 

Two and a half years from his first step on Azurian soil, he was in the mountainous region humans called Everestia in honor of Mount Everest. The names of places and things were different for Azurians, they saw so many things differently, and the region in their language meant something like “the mountains in the west before the great river.”

Peter ended up in Everestia, when a local scholar he’d befriended, Lucie, told him she wanted to return to her childhood village for a longer visit. She—because that was what she’d chosen as her pronoun when Azurians were explained about how the pronouns in language were determined—had left the village at the human equivalent of seventeen, and because it was so remote, she hadn’t gone back since.

“I think you’ll like it here,” she said as they walked into the village. “It’s right up your alley.” The wink she gave him confused him, but in the next fifteen minutes she introduced him to the village leader, Mat, who didn’t even want to hear about pronouns and asked what their genitals had to do about who they were to others, or at least that much Peter could understand in the rant that followed in rapid-fire Azurian.

It became obvious that Mat was fierce, their skin scarred or maybe it was scarification. In any case, they looked like a warrior, with dark colors added to the scars to give them an almost tattoo-like feel. Azurians didn’t have tattoos, not like humans did, but their scars were badges of honor and reserved to those who had won them through adversity.

Mat and their three spouses—of which two were identical twins it seemed—and the group’s seven children lived in the biggest house inside the village walls. Everything there was an odd dichotomy of modest rural village that could’ve been somewhere in the Earth’s Himalayas maybe, and technology like the tablets people read and worked on, or the seemingly invisible heating and air conditioning inside the homes carved partially into the stone of the mountain itself.

 

* * *

 

On his first night in the village, Peter sat on the flat rooftop slash terrace of the house that had been assigned to him as an important guest. He ate the wild herb salad and the tasty fruit that grew on the orchard nearby, and watched as the light slowly but surely diminished in the horizon.

He could hear music from somewhere, a flute and a violin type instruments, and someone was singing in the Azurian language.

A sudden rustle somewhere nearby alerted him of an intruder. An Azurian smoothly rolled over the lip of the rooftop and landed nearby, then let out a squeak when they noticed Peter.

They cursed in their language, then seemingly collected themselves, and said, “H-hello, I didn’t know you were s-staying here.” Then, they spread their hands in a universal gesture of “sorry” and continued. “I come here to relax, to be alone,” they explained. “I’m apologized.”

Peter smiled at the first mistake they made. “You’re ‘sorry’, which means you’re ‘apologizing’,” he said, the teacher in him snapping to attention.

“Oh, right. Thank you.”

“I’m Peter, nice to meet you,” he smiled, knowing that the Azurians didn’t care for handshakes. They normally went for hugs, because they believed if someone had bad intentions, they wouldn’t have it in them to get that close to another.

“I’m…,” they seemed to consider. “Stiles.”

“Hello, Stiles.” He held out a bright red fruit that tasted almost like cherries but was more the size of a large orange. “Do you want one?”

“Yes, please.”

As they sat in companionable silence and watched the night fall, Peter stole glances at his new acquaintance. Stiles had the long limbs and wide shoulders of Azurians, and the translucent skin. His eyes were huge, and whiskey colored, and he had dark brown hair he had braided, probably to keep it out of the way. The sides of his head were hairless, the braid looking like it was made of a long mohawk, and the skin looked almost more purple than blue, yet still light enough in color that it was hard to see clearly in the diminishing light.

“You speak English very well,” Peter said after a while.

Stiles blushed a little, the purple becoming more pronounced on his cheeks. “Thank you. I have learned from the networks.”

The “networks” were the internet of sorts that humans and Azurians had built together. Peter himself input data in there, whenever he found something new and exciting in his research sprees. It was still the fastest way to get information to his colleagues on Earth, after all.

The night was warm, so Peter wore a sleeveless top. His arms with his tattoos were bare, and he could tell Stiles was interested in them.

“Were you a warrior, on your Earth?” he finally asked after he had lit a lantern and Peter another one on the opposite side of the balcony.

Peter chuckled. “No, not at all. I teach and research.”

“In a”—he searched for the word for a while—“college?”

“Yes, exactly. I’m an anthropologist, and a professor.”

Stiles nodded, his eyes still tracking the ink on Peter’s arms. “I only have this,” he said, and pulled up the leg of his loose linen pants to show a dark red, almost wound-looking scarring on his calf. “I was attacked by a….” He made fangs with his fingers and let out an almost growly meow sound to indicate that he didn’t know what the cat beasts on the mountains were called in English.

“Ah, yes.” Peter nodded, smiling. Stiles was quite adorable without meaning to be. He couldn’t tell how old Stiles was, but he guessed around late teens to early thirties in human years. Adult, nonetheless.

“Where did you get yours?”

He explained what tattoos were, how they were made on Earth, and talked about his friends who were artists and had done most of his ink.

“These are for my family,” he pointed at the black flames licking their way up his bicep. “Because most of them died in a fire when I was a college student.”

Stiles nodded seriously, his wide eyes brimming with tears.

Peter ran his fingers over the abstract wolf shapes on his forearm. “And those, they are my two nieces and nephew who survived. I supported them for the first few years, then my eldest niece was old enough to help. We raised her brother and sister together.”

Stiles reached out a hand to point at the delicate Celtic love knot on the side of his wrist. “That’s interesting.”

Peter smiled. “That’s a love knot, a symbol of eternity and loyalty. I got it for my first partner on our second anniversary.”

Stiles seemed to think for a while, as if making sure he understood all the words properly. “You do not walk alongside with them anymore?”

“No, turns out they cheated on me and broke my heart,” Peter explained, snorting. It still hurt, all these years later, and he knew Stiles could tell.

“You’re wrong,” Stiles said seriously, looking at him until Peter raised his gaze to lock with the large, amber eyes.

“Howcome?”

“You’ve felt loss, you’ve made sure people in your family were loved and cared for, and you’ve had your heart broken,” he said, voice filled with some sort of odd firmness, like there was no doubt that he was right. “You’ve suffered, and you’ve learned. And you’re still here. I don’t know what a warrior is, if not that.”

Peter felt his chest ache, the words so sincere, and the truth in them trying to knock his breath out of him.

“Thank you,” he replied simply, and tore his gaze away.

Someone called what was clearly a name in Azurian on the street level somewhere nearby.

Stiles sighed. “That would be the brother of my heart. I have to go.” He got to his feet and smiled at Peter. “I shall ask about the other arm tomorrow night.”

And with that, he smoothly rolled over the edge of the roof and vanished from Peter’s view.

Peter chuckled and shook his head. He had a feeling he would enjoy these discussions and hoped they would continue for his stay here. Or maybe he could stay?

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of those "no idea where it came from" things. I have no plans to continue this, because the genre makes me uncomfortable. That's part of why it's quite vague on some things. But I had this idea and I went with it. I hope you like it, even though it's just a fluffy little alien tale. ;)


End file.
